No one gets up in the morning thinking that it is a good day to rent a storage unit. It’s always reactive. The lease comes to a sudden end. The extra bedroom is transformed into a room of the baby. The garage is not big enough to accommodate the business inventory. You find yourself one day Googling facilities in the middle of the night without the slightest clue of what you are actually searching.

This is the bad news: the vast majority of people choose a storage unit in the same manner as they choose a gas station – nearest one gets the prize. That argument is all right with fuel. Need to store your furniture, business stock or something that you cannot replace? It is a formula of repentance.

Being cluttered is not a character defect. Life just creates more stuff than living areas can assimilate. Marriages, divorces, moves, inheritance – everything in the large life cycle is likely to generate stuff. The pressure release valve that makes households to work is the storage units.

But not all units are worth your money.

Start with size. It is here first-timers are always burned. The majority of individuals have underestimated the amount of volume- people think of the visible and not the hidden in closets and stacked in corners. Twice measure, once rent. And rent a little bigger than the math would tell. The day to find out that your three seater sofa does not fit through the door is not moving day.

The aspect that people argue over until they lose something that cannot be replaced is climate control. Humidity is doing an irreparable damage. Timber is split across the grain. Internal corrosion occurs in electronics. Leather is dry and cracking. Paperwork – such as you will have to refer to later – becomes brittle and illegible. Climate-controlled storage is a cheap way of insuring against losses that you cannot reverse.

The discussion of the security can be held verbally with the staff of the facility. No cursory examination of the brochure – a real-life conversation. Do individual units have alarms or are they only perimeter? Who checks on the cameras? Is access logged? Indistinct responses should be followed up. Your own, your due diligence.

Pricing mechanisms are rewarding to the keen readers. Specials in the first month are the norm in the industry, however, the next part is the real deal. Increases in rates may come unannounced and often at certain facilities. Always have the escalation policy written before making any commitments.

Drive-up availability is a requirement in order to access it frequently. Carrying boxes along the corridors and standing in line in front of one elevator becomes tedious in a few days.

A last tip that far too many renters overlook: visit prior to signing. Take a stroll through the unit. Check the lighting. Test the lock. Speak to whoever is working on the day.

An excellent storage facility fades into the backdrop of your life. A bad one turns into a headache reoccurrence. Choose accordingly.